It’s a busy period at the moment. There’s just the two of us here, and we’re trying to get the rest of the renovation done on the farmhouse so we can switch focus to the straw-bale construction up in the orchard.
Of all the tools we either brought with us or bought here in Turkey, I think the most useful is the air compressor. I used to wonder what these were really for: why would anyone want a big supply of compressed air?
Compressor in action.
It turns out that the reason you want compressed air is because you can use it to do almost anything. Instead of buying lots of small tools like drills or sanders with individual electric motors, the idea is to have one big electric motor that fills a tank with compressed air, and then use the air to power lighter, simpler, hopefully cheaper tools.
Gauges, valves, copper pipes… it’s got everything!
In truth, we haven’t thrown away all our electric saws and drills. But the compressor lets us run tools that don’t always have an electric equivalent. The most dramatic are probably the two nail guns we own: scary! We also have an air-powered staple gun which is incredibly handy for things like upholstery.
For instance: we like our Toyota Hilux, and it will carry a lot of cargo. But one of its few weak points is that you don’t really have a boot. There’s nowhere to lock up your bags or shopping out of sight. So we built a removable tray cover out of basic timber and board, but made it look more professional by covering it in black vinyl. We wouldn’t have been able to do such a nice job of stretching the vinyl without the power of the staple gun.
Truck tray cover: timber and oriented-strand board covered in black vinyl.
We hope it looks professional.
Another air tool that’s going to get a lot of use in the future is a mortar-and-plaster sprayer we had to order from the US. This is going to be a life saver when it comes to the hard work of getting all those straw bale walls covered in three coats of clay plaster.
We tried the sprayer out for the first time on a smaller job: covering a brick wall at the front of the house with cement render.
It’s a clever tool. You dip the bucket into the wet mortar mix…
… and then the compressed air blasts the mortar out onto the wall.
Rendered in no time; will look much nicer once limewashed.
If we hadn’t had to stop and manually mix up additional mortar a few times, the job would have been done in ten minutes. It’s a really smart and simple tool.
Speaking of plastering, we’ve also started to experiment with using the clay-rich soil from our orchard as a plaster base. The oven at the back of the garden was looking a bit worse for wear, so giving it a new coat seemed like good practice.
Fresh coat of earth plaster (just dirt mixed with a bit of ash) on the clay oven.
In that photo, you might spot some cracks forming in our plaster coat as it dries. That was both frustrating and encouraging: it means that the plaster mix we get from simply digging up our soil is actually too rich in clay. We need to add some sand and maybe some straw and lime to perfect it. Further work needed, as the scientists say.
What else have we done lately? We worried that Zeytin (the dog) would not be warm enough as the nights got colder, so we gave her a clear plastic curtain to help keep her body heat inside the doghouse.
A curtain to keep Zeytin warm. Yes, we are soft-hearted people, I know.
And here is a shot of Zeytin looking like a fugitive in an old “wanted” poster.
The next big project is definitely finishing the kitchen. It’s embarrassing how long I’ve put that one off. It’s not that we don’t have a kitchen; it’s just that it’s mostly made out of bookshelves and it doesn’t have a sink in it yet.
Thanks for reading. As usual I will close with a random selection of pictures.
Sirem wanted me to post this shot of some marigolds just to show that they are still in bloom.
More bounty from our neighbour’s garden: we fried most of these peppers and froze them to use over the winter.
A moody-looking sunset over our village.
The tray in the back of the ute looks great. Good job.
Do you need to smooth down the render after spraying it on, or does it go on smooth? Looks really good, but I guess that wall is fine with a rustic look — if you wanted a really smooth finish you could get it right?
Thanks (re the tray).
Good question about the render. You could leave it untouched and you would get that “popcorn” finish that you see on sprayed fire-resistant ceilings from the 1970s. You know that look? We didn’t want that for the wall because it didn’t match other rendering we have at the front of the house. In the end we wiped it over with a trowel to get a smoother finish, but we weren’t quick enough to get it perfect as the sprayed mortar dries to a hard crust surprisingly quickly. If we wanted it to be perfectly smooth, we would have had to be more generous with the mortar (we were running low on cement that day unfortunately) and get a second person to smooth it with a trowel right behind the person doing the spraying. But it could definitely be done.
Also, I should put up some photos of the wall now that it’s dry. Or better, after we’ve limewashed it. You can see the outlines of the bricks in that final photo, but that was partly because the mortar dried at different rates over different parts of the wall. Now that it’s dry it looks more uniform than that photo suggests.
loving these posts :-)
I can see you combining the B&B business with builder/DIY training courses, sponsored by a major air compressor provider.
The level of professionalism (and/or your Photoshop ability :-)) is incredible. How does the Hilux boot cover fix to the cab end? I guess the lock at the back is just a normal cable lock wound round the boot flap? I am having major trouble and heartache just drilling four holes in some paper-thin metal :-) Joe can also tell you stories of my ‘legendary’ construction-instructions-grokking prowess (or lack of).
Oh, that would be the life. :)
And thanks very much. No photoshop in those ones, honest! The tray cover sticks to the truck partly through gravity (it’s fairly heavy) and the physics of having various pieces of timber that fit down into the tray area, so it sort of jams into place when you put it on. Then for safety there’s some metal clips connecting eye bolts in the wood to attachment points on the truck. (We wouldn’t want the thing to come flying off on the freeway, would we?)
And yes, the lock at the back is not particularly elegant. It’s just two pieces of ordinary chain with some plastic tubing around them to avoid scratching the metal panels. The chain bits are locked together with an ordinary padlock. It’s not all that secure, really, as I know from experience that you can get through the chain in about 10 seconds with an angle grinder. But it’s enough to stop the casual car-park thief.
Because the truck was never designed to have a tray cover, the tailgate doesn’t lock at all, so we needed to do something with a chain (or similar) to stop people simply opening the tailgate and reaching in underneath the tray cover.
Impressive. So THAT is what compressors are for…every farmer round us has got one but I never seem to see what they use them for. Sounds like pretty much everything! However, I do feel that you have not given proper recognition to the simple joy of the petrol engine…nothing beats the smell of two-stroke in the morning…
You’re right: the petrol-driven compressor would probably have been the more macho choice. :)
Do I see a cement mixer coming down the track?
You must be psychic, Anne: we bought one yesterday. :)